RatGPT
4mo ago
I do not believe that the Biden white house has more than a ceremonial purpose. Its reality TV for political junkies.
The machinery of USGov will operate itself whether the big guys call in sick or not. It would be a horrible weakness for any of them to actually be important anyway.
Biden is not FDR and Austin is not Truman. Those sort of men are not living today.
Perhaps for the best, the dreams of those those men killed millions. But I do wonder how an autonomous bureaucracy will operate during world war 3. Probably it will execute a series of pointless and poorly planned small interventions in seemingly random theatres. Well, that's basically where we are now.
RatGPT
4mo ago
Don't forget the bay area virtue of believing in complex things to signal your ability to understand complex things. The more elaborate the definition of ones relationship style, gender identity, or flavour of leftism, the more intelligent one must be.
RatGPT
5mo ago
No faction in America has complete control of anything, least of all the government.
The pro Palestinian side however, has far more than you give them credit for- they have major pull in education, media, and NGO spaces.
RatGPT
5mo ago
In such a case the US could said to be a tragic country if criminality is so common in the ruling classes, a democratic one if no one is above the law, or an oligarchic one if there exist factions divorced from democratic oversight able and willing to besmirch beyond repair the reputation of any politician.
While the American regime has managed to convince people that rule of law and democracy go together, they don't. In fact rule of law and democracy are in constant conflict. Enforcing laws is an explicitly unpopular position in American politics. Allowing the mob to rule precludes allowing rules to rule.
RatGPT
5mo ago
The Palestinians also have the backing of the global hegemon, though they are backed by a different faction within it.
This is a bizarre situation and it is the reason why we hear about this war constantly from the press- in stark contrast to for instance Yemen or Azerbaijan.
Ultimately both sides are at the mercy of the US navy, and they behave accordingly.
RatGPT
5mo ago
Stuff like this tends to work before some undetermined period and then blow up suddenly. What's your plan for when the IRS suddenly reprioritizes and checks your return? Do you really want to live with the dread of knowing it could be tomorrow?
RatGPT
5mo ago
Its pretty easy to hate Kissenger. He arranged wars that killed millions. Much harder to accept that he did what he did to avoid Soviet world domination, which would have been very very bad for humanity, and was very very close to happening.
RatGPT
5mo ago
Steel manning perhaps isn't the most appropriate response here. The people committing these actions are not careful intellectuals thinking in steel men. We are not debating college professors.
A better approach is to try to imagine and inhabit the emotional state that leads to these actions.
Specifically, the intoxicated perma berserk mental state of holy war. The serene vision of dominance and power, of divine righteousness, of inevitable victory. The crusader mindset.
You are right! You are powerful! The heathens will fall before you! The kingdom of god shall rise, and with it, you!
The reason for vandalizing a Starbucks or McDonalds is to exercise power. To revel in wrathful indulgence. To show that the will of god is in fact supreme over the heathen merchants.
Ultimately, they are breaking the rules, they are doing something to someone against their will, and they are getting away with it. This is almost worth doing for its own sake, a flimsy nonsensical political pretext pushes it into viability.
RatGPT
5mo ago
I think this is basically impossible given the priorities and practices of Hamas.
Anything of value will be traded, repurposed, or melted down for weapons. Pipes will become rockets. Food will be stockpiled in bunkers while civilians starve. Medicine will be traded to various unscrupulous parties. Hamas is in control of whatever you send to Gaza and Hamas does not share your concern for ordinary Gazans.
RatGPT
6mo ago
Oh theyve got critical thinking skills.
They do not however, use these skills to craft public policy proposals which if implemented would lead to stated goals.
Instead, they think very critically about how their proposals will impact the opinions of voters and donors.
This is what the current systems incentivizes, so it is what happens.
The "humanitarian pause" is of course a nonsense idea, but it sounds good. More specifically, it is defensible to a large range of opinions.
Therapyspeak is the language of the Anarchist. It is the language of those who do not believe in discipline and self control, who want to erase the line between good and evil.
Some of the terms I've heard quite a bit in the past 5 years that I highly distrust:
"Toxic". People and relationships are declared to be toxic, and it is understood that bad actions can then be taken against them. There is no standard for what makes something toxic. Rhetoric using this term often recommends the user to end relationships, and it generally does not look like sound wise advice. Using this term is a request for power and authority, rather than an assertion of meaning.
"Self Care". This is a synonym for self-indulgence, but with a good connotation instead of a bad one. Spending 8 hours watching netflix for example, in my grandfather's English, would be understood to be a moderately shameful act of vice. Now it can be referred to as "Self Care", in which case it is understood as a noble recognition of ones own weakness.
"Triggered". This word is used to blame others for ones own mental outbursts. A man who has internalized a value system of discipline and personal responsibility would never use such a word, but a member of the CPUSA would never question one who did.
"Codependency". Means nothing more than "relationship", but again, it goes from having what is, according to my values, a correct positive connotation, to having an incorrect negative connotation.
There are values which lead to a good stable society. These values were baked into the our culture, into our stories, into our language itself. Most respectable men have internalized these values- its quite hard to achieve anything in life without doing so.
When people use therapyspeak, they are signaling their opposition to these values. They may truly oppose them, or they may want to signify membership in the group of people who oppose them. But if you are still committed to those values, for whatever reason, you may find such speech uncomfortable.
One thing I have no explanation for, is why all of these terms seem to have originated in therapy. I cannot think of any other recently popularized terms like this- terms designed to assault traditional European values and signal membership in the revolution- which did not originate in therapy.
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